back to the earth is another song i always liked but i hear in a totally new light now after randomly listening to it last week on my drive home at night
like obviously if you listen to it with ANY attention span you will know what’s going on. the song is titled “back to earth” and the most noticeable lyrics is the literal chanting of “falling, falling, falling” so it’s like. totally obvious what this song is about i know nothing i say here will be new or contribute anything
but GOD. it gets me so badly. i always knew what it was about, for the above reasons, but the like. EMOTION of it never hit me till now.
like the whole first half of the song is normal lyrics. the words are so dark. the very first line of the chorus is “isolated, i succumb to the weight of the world” like the words isolated, succumb, weight. theyre all so dark in tone. and then coupled with the music itself in the background. that rhythmic guitar riff, pounding away over and over again in the background almost like a clock. its heavy its dark its depressing and it just hammers home that this person is like literally falling to their death like. its DEATH and it feels so heavy for that
and then that part. just chants “falling, falling, falling” over and over again with that guitar riff and its just all the heavier. because there’s no longer any proper lyrics, even. the slow fall to their death is inexorable and that decay is heard even in the music itself
BUT THEN THE TONE SUDDENLY SHIFTS. the chanting stops. the guitar riff stops. it goes suddenly quiet. the chorus whispers “fall, fall” like a breath of fresh air. and then the music gets loud and swells and suddenly turns… bright?? it sounds BRIGHT, compared to the previous parts. and in the background is some sort of grating noise and/or faint screaming (hard to hear exactly what it is since this part is just a huge wall of noise lol) and it’s just like. you KNOW this is that person dying, because of the climax, because of the intensity, because of the screaming. and yet still, there’s that strange bright twist to the instrumentals that makes it almost bittersweet despite the fact that this is like, a horrible way to die. burning up into a fireball in the upper atmosphere as you fall to the surface of the earth is a horrible way to die but in a way, man what a way to go. it must be beautiful in its own way, watching the earth below you and the flames lick away at the edge of your capsule. and that’s almost what this ending feels like, that little bit of beauty within the pain
